Me: Come see what I’ve done!
Him: (standing on porch, looking blankly at radically transformed garden)
Just tell me.
Me: You’re kidding, right? Can’t you tell?
Him: (squints, nervously shifts weight from one foot to the other.)
Me: Well, for starters, that 8-foot alien gomphrena is gone, since the rain flattened it anyway.
And that table has been moved. This other table with all the crap has
been cleared out. All the small pots are gone, leaving just a couple
essential large ones. The grape vine has been cut back and the iron trellis removed.
Isn’t it more open now, less hectic?
Him: Uh-huh, oh, yeah.
Me: I thought leaving this big table with nothing on it would be a nice touch,
kind of a departure for me, you know, where we can sit and eat and
everything, like al fresco Americans. Everything’s much simpler.
Him : I miss Mr. Agave.
Me.: But he was getting too big. He was scaring me! He was all out of scale.
Him: I’m just sayin’.
Me: (reassuringly) He’s right over there.
Him: He looked better here (pointing emphatically)
Me: Well, now there’s that nice pot there.
Him: It’s too gaudy.
Me: That’s the point! It is gaudy. It’s the focal point.
Him: Okay. (Turns and starts to go back inside.)
Me: But you haven’t seen where I moved the little tables to.
I cleared all the junk out of the side yard for a sitting area.
Him: You and your sitting areas. But you never sit!
Me: This summer I will so sit!
